House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said a Google search that led to results this week saying that the ideology of California’s Republican Party was “Nazism” was “disgusting” and shows an inherent bias from big tech firms in Silicon Valley.
“This was disgusting,” McCarthy told MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt in an interview that aired Saturday. “This is a real concern. The bias has to stop.”
Google blamed the incident on a change to a Wikipedia page about the California GOP that slipped by Google employees to vet information that shows up on searches. But conservatives were still angry, and pointed to several other examples of media bias.
McCarthy noted another case highlighted this week by Donald Trump, Jr., who noted Instagram posts that include his name come with a warning that says the posts may “encourage behavior that can cause harm and even lead to death.”
“That was a real concern of what’s going on,” McCarthy said.
“Individuals need to come in [to testify]. There need to be transparencies because we have to have a clear understanding,” McCarthy said. “If they’re controlling the feed of what people are seeing, that is fundamentally wrong … This is an area Congress needs to look at throughout.”
[Also read: Devin Nunes warns Google may need to testify if anti-GOP search results keep showing up]
McCarthy has long been a friendly face to Silicon Valley, but his latest shots at Google are part of a new offensive against big tech firms. This week, McCarthy promoted a speech at the Council for National Policy where he hit the likes of Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter with allegations of bias against conservatives.
McCarthy is in the early stages of a leadership fight to replace House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., although much of that will be subject to the midterm elections and whether the GOP holds the House in November. When asked by Hewitt how he differs from Ryan stylistically, McCarthy demurred and said the need to hold the House takes priority.
“Everybody’s different,” McCarthy said. “But the first thing I’m going to do is I’m not going to worry about being speaker. I’m going to make sure the Republicans are in the majority. I’m going to make sure a Republican has the opportunity to become speaker.”
McCarthy has been on the road fundraising for House Republicans, and set up a joint fundraising account with Vice President Mike Pence in a push to retain the majority.
